Christian Horner says that team's drivers are still allowed to race other

April 30, 2018

Share

Facebook

Tweet

Pinterest

Email

Christian Horner says Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen will apologize to every member of the Red Bull Formula 1 team after crashing together at the F1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Verstappen and Ricciardo are known for being two of the best drivers at overtaking in F1, but on Sunday, after bashing wheels with each other in a closely fought battle throughout the early stages of the race, things came to a head on lap 40.

Ricciardo went for a move that was probably not recommended, and Verstappen was, at the very least, on the limit of what is acceptable when defending your position. Horner, after initially refusing to speak to the media, was highly critical of both drivers but would not lay the blame squarely on one driver.

“There were probably three incidents between the two of them during the course of the Grand Prix,” said Horner. “They touched wheels earlier in the race. They’d been told to calm it down a bit and focus. Their engineers are managing, obviously working with the drivers, but we don’t want to interfere in letting them go wheel to wheel, and they’ve been very good at that up to this point.

“What we’ve always said is, ‘give each other room on track, we’ll let you race’ and they’d just about done that throughout the Grand Prix until that unfortunate incident. Not apportioning blame on the incident to either of the drivers. They’re both to blame with this, and it’s the team that unfortunately miss out.”

Although, from a driver's point of view, the main objective is to be the drivers’ champion -- all drivers race for a team -- and Horner was clear that he will impress upon the drivers just what it means to be part of a team.

“Obviously things get discussed behind closed doors, but the drivers, at the end of the day, drive for a team, and they both recognize that they have screwed up today,” said Horner. “They will be apologizing to the team and all members of the team because it is a team sport and that seemed to get forgotten about.

“We allow them to race, we allow them to go wheel to wheel. We even discussed it in prerace meetings about giving each other space. Unfortunately, this was the culmination of two guys taking things into their own hands, which shouldn’t have happened. They’ve been reminded that they are part of a team and that they have a responsibility in the role that they perform, that they’re both highly paid individuals to act with the team's interest at heart and not just their own -- and the message was delivered very clearly.

"As unfortunate as it is, when you have two closely matched drivers, incidents will occur from time to time, and Red Bull have no plans to stop letting their drivers race each other -- as long as they promise to keep it clean from here on in," Horner said. “Our intention is to continue to let them race, but they’ve got to show the team and each other respect and space.”